Tonight’s good news: The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom is finally arriving on PC, via Steam and 2K Play. It’s due to appear on the 20th April, when we’ll be able to enjoy the self-cloning, pie-consuming puzzles. It’s one of those games that would take a squillion words to explain, but two minutes to watch the video that lays it all out nice and neatly. So that’s below.

The PC version is being developed by 2K China, and will contain five extra puzzles not found in the XBLA version, along with Steam achievements and Steam Cloud options. And it looks jolly fun, and has had some really rather excellent reviews on the 360. Take a look.

I’m assuming he had a handlebar moustache, a centre parting kept there by a generous amount of hair wax, a fob watch in one pocket, a monocle in one eye, and was dressed in clothes from the Victorian era. That’s how I’d imagine a Winterbottom to look.

It looks great, and has a nice soundtrack, but can anyone actually back them up on how it plays? I’ve heard mixed reviews stating that it tends to lose its charms through repetitive puzzle design. This seems to be a bit of a problem when translating little indie games into bigger, publisher backed titles. The tiny concept that worked in the original is inevitably stretched too thin, and covered by improved visuals and other quirks. Of course I could be completely wrong.

There was a flash game posted on this site earlier featuring similar cloning / time manipulation gameplay, AND a man in a top hat but with much rougher graphics and a total absence of pies. What game was this, and why do I have the feeling they’re by the same person?

I really enjoy this current generation of puzzle platformers. It seems to me that the developers attain a great sort of cohesiveness in their games by distilling a simple mechanic and experimenting with many permutations of it. To combine the (hopefully) cerebral nature of a puzzle game with the fluid freedom and frenetic sensibilities of an arcade platformer creates a kind of blissful synergism in my brain. Throw in the creativity of multiple solutions, and a game becomes a kind of lateral thinking problem, albeit more logically constrained, if that makes any sense.

It’s unfortunate that their does not seem to be any precedence for time travel or cloning in silent films. I wonder if any treatments were put forward and deemed too ‘intellectual’ at the time. It would seem likely, considering these concepts have fascinated writers since at least the 16th century.

I agree. These past few years have had so many stand out platformer titles centered around a single compelling mechanic. VVVVVV, Braid, Continuity, P.B Winterbottom, Specter Spelunker Shrinks*, and so on. It’s been a pure joy to play through all of them

*Ok this one is more prototype than actual explored game but it’s still really awesome.

I tried the demo on my Xboxotron just last week, but I didn’t much care for it (perhaps because I was too stupid to finish the tutorial). The music is maddening — it seems like it’s a good choice at first, but nobody wants perky old timey circus music when they’re trying to solve a frustrating puzzle.

From what I’ve heard of this game it’s worth playing. While games like Braid are about finding the developer’s solution the point of P.B. Winterbottom is to create a challenge and let players figure out how they want to solve it. It’s a rare thing for a puzzle game to nail this well, but that’s what P.B Winterbottom has supposedly done.